Method and apparatus for using service representations to align information technology with the strategy of an enterprise

ABSTRACT

A service-oriented architecture for enterprise project management integrates business processes, human resources and project management within an enterprise or across the value chain network. A representation having direction and attributes is provided to show the dependencies between a business value layer and a project-portfolio layer, and between the project-portfolio layer and resources. The representation is mapped to a Web Services representation in UDDI, Web Services interfaces, and Web Services based business processes through rope hyper-linking.

REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application is a continuation from U.S. patent application Ser. No.12/062,819 of the same title filed on Apr. 4, 2008, which is acontinuation from U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/187,838 of thesame title filed on Jul. 25, 2005, from both of which priority isclaimed and which are incorporated by reference herein.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention generally relates to project management and, inparticular, to techniques for aligning information technology with thestrategy of an enterprise.

2. Background Description

Today a lot of enterprises face the same common challenges: significantchanges of market environment, pressure from competitors, changingcustomer requirements, regulation issues, disruptive technologies, andthe like. Business practice development normally goes through thefollowing steps: Strategic Change→Defining businessrequirements→Projects→Project Portfolio→Decision.

Possible changes under business transformation include: change of site(location), change of regulation (depending on geography), change ofbusiness model & customer requirements, change of business eco-system,and so forth.

In the current business environment, Enterprise Project Management (EPM)will have a positive impact on a number of concerns of the ChiefInformation Officer (CIO) of the enterprise. In particular, CIO's citesuch concerns as: (1) cutting/stabilizing costs, (2) aligninginformation technology (IT) investments with business direction, (3)building strong IT service delivery, (4) selective outsourcing, offshoreoutsourcing and balancing of external service providers, (5) managementof internal and external resources, (6) systems integration (e.g.Web-based systems, legacy systems, B2B systems), (7) buildingcredibility for the value of IT's services, (8) prioritizing ITinvestments and formalizing the planning process, (9) security,including disaster recovery and business resumption planning, and (10)enterprise architecture.

All the changes will be realized through ongoing projects within anenterprise. The implementation of an IT project is actually realizedthrough Project Management methodologies. Project management has alwaysbeen a very important function in an organization. It has been used invarious domains and industries such as aircraft design, softwaredevelopment, services delivery, solution development, as well asgovernment programs. Life cycle of each project includes initialization,planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and summarizing.

We summarize all these problems into the following statement: how can weintegrate business requirement data, project data, project progress,resources information all into a single system so that the decisionmaker is able to monitor progress in real time and make decisionspromptly in a managed environment with visibility control?

In fact, bridging the gap between business and IT has been a well knownand challenging topic for years. By providing a standard interfacedescription language and communication protocol, Web services has becomethe most promising technology to address the integration issue indifferent platforms or different programming environments. Therefore, itwould be helpful to extend the usage of Web services technology from anIT-level computing environment to EPM for managing the enterpriseproject portfolio. IT can play a key role in enabling businesstransformation if it is aligned with the strategy of an enterprise.

Enterprise portfolio management is evolving today. It has sometimes beencalled “the third epoch” in the evolution of investment managementprocedures in public- and private-sector organizations. An enterpriseinvolves an amalgamation of interdependent resources (including people,processes, facilities, and technologies) organized to obtain a strategicadvantage in support of mission or business objectives. The decisionmakers in an enterprise must take the investment options and its affectsassociated with specific programs or projects.

META group defines EPM (enterprise program management) as “a holisticview of the coordination, oversight, and portfolio management of allprograms/projects within the enterprise”. The major concerns about theEPM are “the integration of planning, strategy, resource allocation, andarchitecture management to achieve the best value to the enterprise”.Gartner group also call it Project Portfolio Management (PPM).

In this disclosure, Enterprise Project Management (EPM) covers both theproject management aspect and the portfolio management aspect. So in thedescription that follows the term EPM will be used to representEnterprise Portfolio Management as well.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a methodfor aligning IT with the strategy of an enterprise.

This disclosure presents a new service-oriented architecture forenterprise project management that integrates business processes, humanresources and project management within an enterprise or across thevalue chain network. Specifically, this invention includes a “rope”based representation method to show the dependencies between BusinessValue & Portfolio, and between Portfolio & Resources. A rope hasdirection, and several attributes. In addition, the present inventionincludes a mechanism to map the intuitive “rope” representation to WebServices representation in Universal Description, Discovery andIntegration (UDDI) registry format, Web Services interfaces, and WebServices based business processes through rope hyper-linking. A roperepresents an influence from one element to another one. Attributescould be assigned to this relationship binding rope.

Prior art solutions require project managers to submit resourcerequirements separately. This delays the handling of resourcerequirements until a later time. The enterprise's lack of a global viewof projects are doing optimization based on each individual project.With a global view, the present invention can perform globaloptimization and enable more effective and productive decisions. Priorart solutions can not provide this capability.

This disclosure presents a service-oriented framework for enterpriseproject management, followed by a set of examples that use a WebServices (WS) Resource (WSResource) specification to capture theresources in WS-EPM environments, and using Business Process ExecutionLanguage (BPEL) to capture various operations during project execution.

One aspect of the invention is an architecture for project management ofan enterprise. This architecture comprises a Web Services stack, whichis in turn made up of a transport layer, a messaging layer, adescription layer, a quality of experience layer, and a servicecomposition layer. The architecture also provides for a businessactivity integration layer, which is added to the Web Services stack.Further, there is a Web Services Enterprise Project-Portfolio Management(WS-EPM) specification in the business activity integration layer, andthe WS-EPM specification further comprises WS-EPM resources, WS-EPMoperations and WS-EPM utilities. The WS-EPM resources provides a uniformservice representation for resources applied to WS-EPM operations, andthe WS-EPM utilities apply enterprise management criteria to WS-EPMoperations, thereby aligning management of the enterprise with WS-EPMoperations.

Another aspect of the invention is a method for project management of anenterprise that uses a rope metaphor, having direction and attributes,to represent dependencies between a business value layer and aproject-portfolio layer, and dependencies between the project-portfoliolayer and a resources layer, as a rope having direction and attributes.This method maps these representations to a Web Services representationusing UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) format andWSResource properties language. The Web Services representation uses anenhanced Web Services Stack having as an additional layer a Web ServicesEnterprise Project-Portfolio Management (WS-EPM) specification.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The foregoing and other objects, aspects and advantages will be betterunderstood from the following detailed description of a preferredembodiment of the invention with reference to the drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the Web Services Enterprise ProjectManagement (WS-EPM) architecture of the invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a business value network in an enterprise.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a service-oriented integrated project orportfolio management framework in accordance with the invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating the invention's framework of WebServices for Enterprise Project Management (WS-EPM).

FIG. 5 is stack diagram showing the current Web Services Stack and aproposed WS-EPM Stack.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing project prioritization based on businessstrategy.

FIG. 7 is a screen image showing a snapshot of a project portfolioprioritization workbench implementing the enterprise project managementframework of the invention.

FIG. 8 is a table giving an example of high level EPM flow in a BusinessProcess Execution Language (BPEL).

FIG. 9 is a table giving an example of a Web Services DefinitionLanguage (WSDL) using Web Services Resources (WSResources) for definingWS-EPM resources.

FIG. 10 is a table showing a request accessing WS-EPM resourceproperties.

FIG. 11 is a table showing a response to the request shown in FIG. 10.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF A PREFERRED EMBODIMENT OF THE INVENTION

The present invention consists of three major parts, as shown in FIG. 1:

Part 1 is a WS-EPM workbench 110 used at design time for simulating andadjusting the relationship between “Business Value” 120,“Project-Portfolio” 125, and “Resources” 130. The WS-EPM workbench 110will use a very intuitive and innovative “rope” based representation toshow the dependencies between Business Value & Portfolio (rope A, decidevalue of projects) and Portfolio & Resources (rope B, decide cost ofprojects) rope has direction, and several attributes. Examples includethe following:

-   -   Revenue (value) may be achieved by online integration of several        key projects (in portfolio)    -   One project (e.g. solution project) may depend on readiness of        another project (e.g. infrastructure project)    -   A project depends on resources with different kinds of skill    -   Projects may compete with each other for same kind of resources        at the same period

A designer could change/simulate the dependencies by changing thelength, strength, etc. of the ropes.

Part 2 is a mechanism 150 to map the intuitive “rope” representation toWS representation in UDDI, WS interface, WS based Business Process. Arope could correspond to a hyperlink. A rope represents an influencefrom one element to another one. Attributes could be assigned to a rope.

For the rope between Value→Portfolio, attributes include

-   -   Time to market,    -   Value-add to IT maturity    -   Customer requirements

For the rope between Portfolio→Resource, attributes include

-   -   Budget,    -   Duration,    -   Resources required        -   Common resources (like Java™/C++ developer)        -   Resources with specific skills (like domain expert, platform            expert, etc.)

The competition for the same key resource could be represented by ropesconnected to the same resource type.

Part 3 is the runtime aspect of the invention and comprises the WS-EPMframework 160 based on WS-Resource Framework and BPEL4WS (BPEL for WS).In the WS-EPM framework, the project resources include businessprocesses, skilled people, physical resources, control policies, and soforth. The project resources used in WS-EPM 160 are described byWSResource properties language. In addition, the coordination of projectresources is guided by a set of operations modeled by Business ProcessExecution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS). The WS-EPM framework 160reflects a transformation of the old Web Services stack 170 as a resultof mapping 150.

Experience in applying the EPM tool in the banking and electronicsindustries shows that through EPM customers can achieve:

-   -   IT alignment with business strategy for project management;    -   Saving cost through enterprise wide coordination;        -   Efficient use of resources and budget, shortening time to            market; and    -   Visibility control.

As shown in FIG. 2, an enterprise has multiple divisions or departmentssuch as Business Development Dept. 210, Marketing Dept. 220, DevelopmentDept. 230, and Human Resource Dept. 240. At the same time, some corebusiness processes are executed across multiple organizations within theenterprise as well as outside of the enterprise. The typical businessprocesses are New Product Development 250, Customer RelationshipManagement 260, Industry Solutions 270, and Supply Chain Management 280,among others (not shown). In today's enterprise, each organization isinvolved in multiple core business processes. In addition, a businessprocess may interact with other business processes to form a businessvalue network 290 shown in FIG. 2.

Based on the above operational view of the enterprise 310 that couldoften undergo changes because of changes of environment, an EPM(Enterprise Project/Portfolio Management) framework is shown in FIG. 3.The value network of EPM includes the corporate level management role320 that is responsible for the business objectives 325 of theenterprise and acts to define business strategy 330, the line ofbusiness program management role level 340 that is responsible forprograms and initiatives 345 implementing business objectives 325 andacts to generate initiatives 350, a program management role level 360that is responsible for projects 365 implementing programs andinitiatives 345 and acts to create and manage the project portfolio 370.The project portfolio is built from tools 385 provided by an IT engineerrole level 380 characterized by actions providing a service oriented ITinfrastructure 390. The invention uses Web services to capture theactivities crossing different layers of EPM and then seamlesslycommunicate these to all the components in the value chain network (item290 in FIG. 2).

There is no uniform way to capture the capabilities of eachorganization, business requirements for each core business process,representation of business processes or activities, delivery, schedule,and controlling policies in the business value network 290. In a projectmanagement lifecycle, all the resources are dynamically allocated basedon the project goals, budgets, schedule, status, and exceptions. In oneapproach, each project is associated with an organization, which islocated on a specific site. A project may have one or more tasks, whichcan be assigned to internal organization or outsourced to otherorganizations.

The difference between applying the concept of Web Services Resources(which originally comes from Grid Services in Open Grid ServiceArchitecture) to EPM and applying it to original Grid Resourcemanagement lies in different types of resources. That is, under EPMcircumstances, the resources are people, money, time, and the like,while Grid resources are memory, CPU, storage, etc. Therefore in EPM,resource allocation for a specific kind of resource is not onlyconstrained by resource conflicts, but is also governed by businessstrategy (priority of different business objectives).

The basic idea of addressing this challenging issue is to “treat” allthe components at the business level or IT level as “services”, whichcan be captured and operated in a standard way. Therefore, aservice-oriented integrated project or portfolio management frameworkprovides a way of bridging the gap between business changes and ITrealizations, as shown in FIG. 4, which illustrates the framework of WebServices for Enterprise Project Management (WS-EPM) in accordance withthe invention. All the resources are captured in WSResource and all theoperations or flows are captured in BPEL.

In WS-EPM, the resources may include (but are not limited to) people,time, computer, other hardware and software, services, money, spaces,and others. The discussion below illustrates how WSResource can be usedto represent a process, an example resource defined in WS-EPM. By thesame token, all the other resources also can be captured in WSResourceproperties language. In addition, the high-level enterprise EPM flow canbe captured in BPEL as shown in FIG. 8 by Table 1. The high-level flowof EPM 410 starts from initialization process 420, planning process 430,then moves to executing process 440, monitoring and controlling process450, and ends with summarizing process 460. These are all described as aWeb Service Process and draw from WS-EPM Resources 480 that areuniformly expressed as services, under constraints provided by WS-EPMUtilities 470.

The initialization process 420 describes such elements of the enterpriseas vision, goals, scope, team and expected results. In the projectplanning stage 430, the project goals and scope maybe refined. A set ofspecific tasks or activities associated with a project should beoutlined. The initial schedule and budget allocation should also beplanned.

In the project executing stage 440, working with team to lead to projectsuccess is the most important goal. Along with this long-runningprocess, problem solving (e.g. creating innovative technology to addressa key solution problem) and project implementation are the two majoractivities.

Monitoring and controlling process 450 is the next important step formonitoring the status of project and business exceptions as well astaking actions such as resource allocation and invoking engineeringchange management.

The last step in a project lifecycle is summarizing process 460, whichfocuses on the final product or service delivery. At the same time,preparing documents and releasing allocated resources are importantactivities for closing a project successfully.

It should be emphasized that WS-EPM Resources 470 covers people, time,computer resources such as hardware and software, service standards,process limitations, money, policy requirements, available space and anyother resources that go into EPM flow 410.

The BPEL shown in FIG. 8 as Table 1 models the high-level operations ofWS-EPM as a system which takes business requirements as the input andgenerates new products or services as the response to the receivedbusiness requirements. The sequential operations or services will beperformed accordingly.

The current Web Services stack 520 shown in FIG. 5 includes theTransports layer 525, Messaging layer 530 (e.g. Simple Object AccessProtocols (SOAP)), Description layer 535 (Web Services DefinitionLanguage (WSDL)), Quality of Experience (QoX) layer 540, and ServiceComposition layer 545 (e.g. Business Process Execution Language(BPEL4WS)). The other enabling infrastructure of Web Services consistsof UDDI registries, Web Services Inspection Language (WSIL), and soforth (now shown). The current Web services standard stacks are morefocused on the enabling infrastructure level. They cannot address thechallenges and problems in the industry solution domain such asenterprise project management.

Therefore, the invention provides a new stack layer, Business ActivityIntegration 550, to provide a uniform integration framework for usingWeb Services to integrate business processes, people, and information ina standard way for enterprise project management. WS-EPM as developed inthe present invention is an example integration specification atBusiness Activity Integration Layer in the future Web Services Standardsstack.

As is evident from FIG. 5, WS-EPM leverages the existing Web servicestechnology components such as WS-Resource and BPEL4WS to define theresources involved in EPM and describe key operations. The WS-EPMspecification covers basic constructs in an Enterprise Project PortfolioManagement system. Specifically, as shown in FIG. 4, the WS-EPMconstructs cover three major parts: Resources 470, Operations 410, andUtilities 480.

As described above, WS-EPM Resources include people, time, computerresources, other hardware and software, services, money, spaces, andother resources. If a resource has different states that depend on time,location or other project attributes or contexts, we will use the term“stateful” to refer to that resource. The stateful resources used inWS-EPM can be represented in Web Services Resource Property language.Since WSResource also provides a way to access the defined statefulresources in an enterprise, WS-EPM is a very good example of using WSRFin enterprise management. The beauty of WSResource is that it supportsdynamic creation of resource properties and their values.

Internal and external resources will be registered, according to skillset, and put into a UDDI repository of WS-EPM. In the enterpriseenvironment, there are some customized resources, which are described asfollows.

-   -   Business components: A business component is a specific kind of        service in operational environment of the enterprise, e.g.        customer service, product manufacturing process, auditing and        management process, and the like. Under business transformation,        people from an enterprise may find that some existing business        components could not provide the necessary function (Gap), or it        has something redundant with another component (Overlap), or it        is a completely new business component (New). Whatever the        circumstances, a business component is required to be improved        as a business initiative. As a result, a project will be        established. The expected result of that project is to achieve        some outcomes to influence one or multiple business components.        It is the feature of outcome or influence on business components        (e.g. whether it is urgent to be improved) that leads to a final        decision regarding the sequence of a project within a project        portfolio and how resources (people, budget) are allocated to        those projects.    -   Business policy: It consists of certain business rules to make        the project efficient, or something needed to be done in order        to be compliant with the regulations.    -   Non-functional requirements, such as a Key Performance Indicator        (KPI), which is a business performance index owned by some        people in the enterprise and measured by their stakeholders:        Compared with “what” can be done with a business component,        non-functional requirements cover those concerns such as user        friendliness, duration of the project, budget allocated,        required skill set, etc. Non-functional requirements are usually        directly linked with business strategy.

As an example, consider “Product Development Process” as a businesscomponent in an WS-EPM environment to define its properties. Theassociation of the resource properties document with the portTypedefines the type of the WSResource, as shown in FIG. 9 by Table 2. It isnoted that creating WSResource compatible WSDL files is not the mainfocus of the present invention. It is more important to identify theassociated resources in the context of Web Services for EnterpriseProject Management.

In WS-EPM, you can use a Web services call to discover all the resourcesrelated to EPM and the properties of the resources. For example, you canretrieve all the information about resources such as Product DevelopmentBusiness Process (ProductDevBP).

In the example shown in FIG. 10 as Table 3, we illustrate how toretrieve three resource property elements from the WS-Resource thatimplements the GenericProductDevBP portType. The corresponding responseabout the product development business process is shown as follows inFIG. 11 as Table 4. All the WSResource requests and responses will beencoded in SOAP messages. In addition, we can also easily set propertiesfor the WS-EPM Resources by using SOAP encoding based communicationmechanism.

The lifetime of WS-EPM resources can be monitored and managed. All theoperations or actions such as GetResourceProperty,GetResourcePropertyResponse, GetMultipleResourceProperties,SetResourceProperties, QueryResourceProperties which are defined inWSResource can be directly used to set, update, and monitor WS-EPMResources.

WS-EPM operations cover initialization, planning, executing, monitoringand controlling, and summarizing in the lifecycle of a project. As shownin FIG. 4, the project initialization process 420 will be used to setthe initial vision, goals, team, expected results and scope for eachproject.

We will use a new product development project as an example. A projectusually has different activities (or phases), e.g. Assessment,Requirement Definition, Macro Design, Micro Design, Development, ChangeManagement, Auditing, etc. Usually activities within a project haveinherent dependencies:

-   -   Sequential relationship: activity B must follow activity A    -   Resource sharing: activity B must wait until A release a        resource instance X (e.g. a Java™ developer)    -   other dependencies that have been covered in WBS (Work Breakdown        Structure) in a normal project management system        There are different types of task dependencies such as finish to        start, start to start, finish to finish, and start to finish.        These types are modeled using a Web services flow language like        BPEL.

There are several existing research efforts related to the dependencydescription in business process or web services, and some of these ideascould be leveraged in this WS-EPM framework.

The priority of a project depends on a number of factors, such as,tangible value (revenue), intangible value (like brand), scope of theproject, required time to market, and factors deciding whether theproject is suitable to be developed inside or outside (by outsourcing).As discussed above, priority of a project is related to value, cost,etc. They are used as criteria to guide the coordination of differentprojects. The Prioritization Web service (PWS) in WS-EPM framework willtake these factors as input and perform project prioritizationaccordingly.

Let us take two example resources, people and budget, into considerationin an EPM system for resource management. These two resources are thefactors that affect how the projects are managed and implemented, how weshould balance the resources for a specific project to achieve anoverall best performance. For example, resources can be firstly dividedinto internal resources (internal development) or external resources (byoutsourcing). Internal resources can be organized into a large resourcepool so that the whole enterprise can enjoy the cost saving brought byshared services. In the WS-EPM architecture of the invention, theResource-Management Web service will take the current availableresources as the input to perform optimal resource allocation.

Since resources are always limited and shared among different businessunits, it happens quite often that at the same time, different projectactivities require the same kind of skill set so that a resourceconflict occurs.

The key factor influencing the resource conflict is resourcedependencies among different project activities. We will demonstratethree ways to solve resource conflicts among projects in a portfolioaccording to their priority. The decision is up to the ProjectManagement Office (PMO).

Here, we define a project portfolio (e.g. those projects supporting thefunction of same line of business) as PP; we define the number ofprojects in PP as N; we order the projects in PP such that P₁ has thehighest priority and P_(N) has the lowest priority. We assume that P₁use M resource types (R₁, R₂, . . . R_(M)). In order to perform projectcoordination, we use three Web services, namely ConflictTransferWS,RelaxResourceWS, and SearchResourceWS, to realize the following threeapproaches, respectively:

Approach 1 (ConflictTransferWS): Identify the conflicted resources inP₁, transfer these conflicts directly to other projects in PP;

Approach 2 (RelaxResourceWS): Relax the resources' requirements in P₁,e.g. by changing the project duration or FTE (Full Time Equivalent) andsee if conflicts are diminished.

Approach 3 (SearchResourceWS): Go back to resource allocation operation,search substitute resources.

We will now use an industry scenario to illustrate how WS-EPM is used tomodel resources, perform project prioritization, as well as resourcesmanagement. After corporate level persons decide the strategy for anenterprise, a KPI tree representing the criteria for selecting projects610 could be created, as shown in FIG. 6. An Analytical HierarchyProcess (AHP) method is used to decide project priority scores. Thecriteria for IT project selections 610 are based on the company'sstrategy. The weights for scoring the priorities for Customer impact620, Time to market 630, Project scope 640, and Cost saving 650 are 0.5,0.2, 0.1, and 0.2, respectively. The priorities for the customer impactaspect 620 is equally divided between product usability and attractingnew customers. Similarly, the priority of Time to market 630 is mainlydecided (0.8) by differentiating with competitors. For the Cost savingaspect 650, the operational cost saving has a higher priority (0.7)compared with IT cost saving whose priority is 0.3. The implementationof this method should be realized in the Prioritization Web service(PWS) in the WS-EPM framework.

FIG. 7 is a screen image giving a snapshot of an implementation of theinvention illustrating the EPM framework. It supports resourceallocation 710, conflict solving 720, project scheduling 730, portfolioprioritization 740, resource management 750, projection portfoliomanagement 760, and system administration 770. The implementation shownin FIG. 7 is generated using Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF), but othercomparable tools may be used. Combining the power of Web Services, thisimplementation provides an extensible infrastructure for a fully workingWS-EPM system.

Using this, we can register and find/bind project and resourceinformation at run time. We can also create some higher-level APIs whichare built on top of the above operations to simplify WS-EPM operations.For example, an operation named as WS-EPM-ProductDev-Operation iscreated to read and write property values to the ProductDev relatedresources. It hides the complexity of calling regular WSResourceoperations. Meanwhile, it provide a customized solution for WS-EPM byusing the WSResource framework underneath.

A detailed operation procedure is illustrated as follows: (1) Duringdesign phase, projects will be registered, according to their impact onvarious business components, and according to their characteristics,which are represented as WS-EPM Resources; (2) During project execution,project activities and their interdependencies will be captured andmonitored using BPEL4WS.

As described above, we have presented a new service-orientedarchitecture for enterprise project management, WS-EPM, which canintegrate business process, human resources and project managementwithin an enterprise or across the value chain network. Specifically,this invention includes a “rope” based representation method to show thedependencies between Business Value & Portfolio, Portfolio & Resources.A rope has direction, and several attributes. In addition, the presentinvention includes a mechanism to map the intuitive “rope”representation to a Web Services representation in UDDI, with WebServices interfaces, and Web Services based business processes throughrope hyper-linking. A rope represents an influence from one element toanother one. Attributes could be assigned to this relationship bindingrope.

In the WS-EPM framework of the invention, the project resources includebusiness processes, skilled people, physical resources, controlpolicies, and so forth. The project resources used in WS-EPM aredescribed by WSResource properties language. In addition, thecoordination of project resources is guided by a set of operationsmodeled by Business Process Execution Language for Web Services(BPEL4WS). It can be seen how Web Services enabled EnterpriseProject-portfolio Management may meld Web Services infrastructure intothe critical EPM process and improve working efficiency and pave the wayfor continuous business transformation.

While the invention has been described in terms of a single preferredembodiment, those skilled in the art will recognize that the inventioncan be practiced with modification within the spirit and scope of theappended claims.

1. An A computer implemented representational architecture for projectmanagement of an enterprise, comprising: a representation on thecomputer of a Web Services stack, said representation of the WebServices stack further comprising a transport layer, a messaging layer,a description layer, a quality of experience layer, and a servicecomposition layer; a representation on the computer of a businessactivity integration layer, added to said representation of the WebServices stack; a representation on the computer of a Web ServicesEnterprise Project-Portfolio Management (WS-EPM) specification in saidbusiness activity integration layer, said representation of a WS-EPMspecification further comprising WS-EPM resources, WS-EPM operations andWS-EPM utilities, wherein said WS-EPM resources provides a uniformservice representation for resources applied to said WS-EPM operations,and said WS-EPM utilities apply enterprise management criteria to saidWS-EPM operations, thereby aligning management of said enterprise withsaid WS-EPM operations.
 2. An architecture as in claim 1, wherein saidWS-EPM operations comprise a plurality of Web Services processesexecuted in a particular sequence responsive to intrinsic connectionsbetween said processes, said plurality including: initialization,planning, executing, monitoring/controlling, and summarizing.
 3. Anarchitecture as in claim 1, wherein said uniform service representationfor resources is provided by WSResource properties language.
 4. Anarchitecture as in claim 1, wherein a design of said WS-EPM operationscomprises a representation of dependencies between a business valuelayer and a project-portfolio layer, and a representation ofdependencies between said project-portfolio layer and a resources layer.5. An architecture as in claim 4, wherein said representations arehyperlinks having attributes.
 6. An architecture as in claim 4, whereinsaid representations are mapped to said Web Services Stack usingUniversal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) registry formatand WSResource properties language.
 7. A computer implemented method forproject management of an enterprise, comprising the steps of:representing on the computer dependencies between a business value layerand a project-portfolio layer, and dependencies between saidproject-portfolio layer and a resources layer, as a rope havingdirection and attributes; and mapping said representations to a WebServices representation using UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery andIntegration) format and WSResource properties language, wherein said WebServices representation uses an enhanced Web Services Stack having as anadditional layer a Web Services Enterprise Project-Portfolio Management(WS-EPM) specification.
 8. A method as in claim 7, wherein said WS-EPMspecification further comprises WS-EPM resources, WS-EPM operations andWS-EPM utilities.
 9. A method as in claim 8, wherein said WS-EPMoperations comprise a plurality of Web Services processes executed in aparticular sequence responsive to intrinsic connections between saidprocesses, said plurality including: initialization, planning,executing, monitoring/controlling, and summarizing.
 10. A method as inclaim 8, wherein said WS-EPM resources provides a uniform servicerepresentation for resources applied to said WS-EPM operations, and saidWS-EPM utilities apply enterprise management criteria to said WS-EPMoperations, thereby aligning management of said enterprise with saidWS-EPM operations.
 11. A method as in claim 10, wherein said uniformservice representation for resources is provided by WSResourceproperties language.
 12. A method as in claim 7, wherein said dependencyrepresentations are hyperlinks having attributes.
 13. A method as inclaim 7, wherein said dependency representations are mapped to said WebServices Stack using Universal Description Discovery and Integration(UDDI) registry format and WSResource properties language.
 14. Acomputer implemented system for project management of an enterprise,comprising: first computer code operable on the computer forrepresenting dependencies between a business value layer and aproject-portfolio layer, and dependencies between said project-portfoliolayer and a resources layer, as a rope having direction and attributes;and second computer code operable on the computer for mapping saidrepresentations to a Web Services representation using UDDI (UniversalDescription, Discovery and Integration) format and WSResource propertieslanguage, wherein said Web Services representation uses an enhanced WebServices Stack having as an additional layer a Web Services EnterpriseProject-Portfolio Management (WS-EPM) specification.
 15. A computerimplemented system as in claim 14, wherein said WS-EPM specificationfurther comprises WS-EPM resources, WS-EPM operations and WS-EPMutilities.
 16. A computer implemented system as in claim 15, whereinsaid WS-EPM operations comprise a plurality of Web Services processesexecuted in a particular sequence responsive to intrinsic connectionsbetween said processes, said plurality including: initialization,planning, executing, monitoring/controlling, and summarizing.
 17. Acomputer implemented system as in claim 15, wherein said WS-EPMresources provides a uniform service representation for resourcesapplied to said WS-EPM operations, and said WS-EPM utilities applyenterprise management criteria to said WS-EPM operations, therebyaligning management of said enterprise with said WS-EPM operations. 18.A computer implemented system as in claim 17, wherein said uniformservice representation for resources is provided by WSResourceproperties language.
 19. A computer implemented system as in claim 14,wherein said dependency representations are hyperlinks havingattributes.
 20. A computer implemented system as in claim 14, whereinsaid dependency representations are mapped to said Web Services Stackusing Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) registryformat and WSResource properties language.
 21. A computer implementedmethod for enterprise project management, the computer performing thesteps of: capturing on the computer resources of the enterprise in aresource properties language; capturing on the computer operations ofthe enterprise in a business process execution language; for eachproject undertaken by the enterprise, performing by the computer saidoperations in a particular sequence responsive to intrinsic connectionsbetween said operations and closing the project by releasing allocatedresources; wherein each of said operations in the particular sequencedraws from said resources expressed as services and captured in saidresource properties language, each of said operations being constrainedby enterprise management criteria provided through enterprise utilities,and wherein all said projects form a portfolio, and said drawing ofresources is optimized across the portfolio according to a priority ofsaid projects provided through said enterprise utilities.
 22. A computerimplemented method as in claim 21, wherein said particular sequence ofoperations is intrinsically connected as a project life cycle sequencefurther comprising the steps: initialize the project by describing goalsand expected results; outline tasks associated with the project;implement said tasks; monitor a status of the project; and summarize theproduct or service delivered by the project.